Categories:

Ben Hecht’s critically acclaimed autobiographical memoir, first published in 1954, offers incomparably pungent evocations of Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s, Hollywood in the 1930s, and New York during the Second World War and after.

“His manners are not always nice, but then nice manners do not always make interesting autobiographies, and this autobiography has the merit of being intensely interesting.”—Saul Bellow, New York Times

Named to Time’s list of All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books, which deems it “the un-put-downable testament of the era’s great multimedia entertainer.”

Ben Hecht (1893–1964) was an American screenwriter (Scarface,The Front Page, Notorious), reporter, playwright, journalist, and novelist. According to Pauline Kael, he was “the greatest American screenwriter.” David Denby is the author of Great Books, American Sucker, Snark, and Do the Movies Have a Future? He has been a staff writer and film critic at The New Yorker since 1998.

“His manners are not always nice, but then nice manners do not always make interesting autobiographies, and this autobiography has the merit of being intensely interesting."—Saul Bellow, New York Times